Why your next car might track passengers with radar

Plenty of cars (and not just autonomous ones) use radar to spot outside dangers on the road, like that pick-up truck in your blindspot.

But in the near future, radar imaging could be used to monitor what's going on inside of your car.

It could detect a baby left in the backseat, for example, or alert a distracted driver. It could even measure a passenger's heart rate through their chest movement. 

Carmakers are looking into radar technology since they'll need seat sensors and alerts in new U.S. vehicles by 2025 to prevent child fatalities. In 2019 there were 52 hot car deaths in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. More than half of them involved children left in a car, most of them kids under 2 years old.  Read more...